How And Where To Find New Customers

on June 13, 2018

As a small business, finding new customers is a top priority. However, the big question is always how to do it. Where are these elusive customers hiding? How do you reach them?

Video marketing has grown by leaps and bounds and is currently one of the most effective tools in your online marketing toolkit. In fact, finding new customers with video has never been easier.

Not sure where to start? Relax. We’ve got you covered.

Where Are The Customers?

When it comes to the online world, your small business would be wise to realize that your customers are everywhere. It’s freeing, isn’t it? Your potential customers are no longer limited to the area surrounding your brick and mortar store. Instead, they’re all around you, just waiting to be found and nurtured. They’re on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. They’re checking email, viewing videos, and generally existing in the online space.

Now, let’s go out and get them.

Target Your Ideal Customer

If you aren’t using Facebook ads, you’re missing the boat on a powerful targeting tool. With Facebook ads, you are able to precisely target your ideal customer. Every business has their ideal customer, the customer segment their product or service is created for.

If your ideal customer is a 46-year-old man in Chicago who likes Game of Thrones (and who doesn’t?) and drinking coffee: you can target that individual. Unless you run a Game of Thrones-themed coffee shop, you may need to tweak that profile a bit, but the point is: if you know who your customer is, you can target them with your Facebook advertising.

This is great news for your video marketing. Why? Because your customers are already watching over an hour of Facebook videos a week. If the first rule of show business is to give the audience what they want, the first rule of marketing is to engage customers where they are.

Expand Your Social Media Reach

As a small business, you may feel pressured to be on every social media platform at once. The truth is that this can be a tall order for a small business. Unless you have a dedicated social media admin on your team, there’s simply too many to focus on.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn, the list goes on. There are even industry-specific social platforms and forums that you can explore. Early on, your best bet is focusing on Facebook. It has the largest number of active users and one of the better advertising features.

However, if you’ve got your Facebook strategy under control, it may be time to expand to other platforms. Again, you don’t need to be everywhere, but expanding to one or two more channels can help you cast a wider online marketing net.

Nearly every social media platform supports some form of video marketing content or video advertising so you’ll be able to use your videos across multiple channels.

Cross-Promote

Identify businesses that are adjacent to your industry without being direct competitors. For example, a cheese company may partner with a wine company. Both offer food/drink items but are distinctly different products. Their customers, however, most certainly overlap.

Form an online marketing strategy where you can cross-promote one another. Perhaps a limited partnership, a discount promotion, or more. This will expand your organic reach as each business will promote the offering to their respective customer bases.

If you can create specific materials for the promotion, even better. A creative and catchy video is great. A creative, catchy video promoted to double the audience? Worth its weight in video marketing gold.

Collect Contact Information. Build Lists

Get ready to write this one down. You ready? Good.

It’s 2018. Everyone has an email address. Get it and build lists of prospects.

Attend a trade show? Collect contact info. Have a website? Offer newcomers a discount on their first purchase if they sign up for your newsletter. Sell online? Collect email addresses from every customer. The list of ways to collect contact information is almost as limitless as the number of lists you can create.

Now your job is to create lists. Segment your customers into clear and identifiable groups. That list from the tradeshow is one list. Current customers are another, etc.

Email marketing is still one of the most effective forms of online marketing. In fact, email marketing has a median ROI of 122%. That’s over 4x higher than other marketing channels, including social media.

What’s more, if you aren’t making video marketing a part of your email strategy (and you should be), listen up! Email subject lines that include the word “video” in them increase the open rate of that email. It’s a great way to turbocharge your email strategy.

Bottom line: don’t pass up an opportunity to collect contact information and use that to your advantage later.

Widen Your Audience

Once you’ve hit your target audience, don’t be afraid to widen your net and promote your video marketing ads to a larger audience. Consider other customers who may have a use for, or be interested in your product and target them as well.

This is where A/B testing comes into play. A/B testing (sometimes called “split testing”) is where you run two similar versions of something (in this case, a video ad) with slight variations. A different call to action, a different headline, or different ad copy can make a huge impact; especially if you’re targeting a new audience.

Don’t be afraid to create multiple ad versions and see which one works best. This can work for your target demographic as well as any new audience you’re trying to reach.

Now Go Forth And Find Customers

Video marketing is a great addition to your online marketing strategy. Not only can it help entice new customers, there’s virtually no limit to the ways in which it can be used. From social media to email, video marketing is a great way to find and attract new customers for your small business.

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